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We at Spawning Tool have been thrilled by the engagement and enthusiasm from the community in using our site. So far, we have had tens of thousands of replays uploaded and over 200 build orders shared. However, the biggest limitation and most common request we have is that you can only access the data from the browser. To address that, we’re excited to announce the Spawning Tool Build Advisor, the best way to learn a build order.

Through Overwolf, the Build Advisor allows you to follow a build order live with an in-game overlay during your game. Browse through the builds listed on our site, then select your winning strategy to use during any ladder or custom game. As soon as the game starts, the overlay will sync with the in-game timer and walk through each step of the build so you don’t miss a thing. And that’s it.

To get started, download and setup Overwolf, then install the Spawning Tool Build Advisor app. It will automatically launch when you start StarCraft.

We hope you find the app as useful as we have. As always, if you have any feedback, please reach out to us on twitter @spawningtool or via email spawningtool@gmail.com . We would love to know how we can improve your StarCraft.

SpawningTool holds the largest collection of StarCraft 2 pro-level replays, build orders, and replay statistics. The site uses machine learning and the information stored in the replays to generate these statistics, label build orders, and organize games by series/event.

With the success the site has seen over the last 6 months, we have no one to thank except the community. In order to give back, we are going to host a $200+ invitational and release a new plugin coming soonTM. This plugin is going to allow you to have any build from the site shown live, in-game, without disrupting your perfect micro of course!

Matcherino is a extremely powerful website that gives any tournament or showmatch host the ability to crowdfund their tournament. They recently launched their new Tournaments Feature, which has automatic payouts, crowdfunding capabilities, stretch goals, and more! We at SpawningTool are very excited to have Matcherino as a sponsor plan on inviting them to any other events we host in the future. We are going to be using this Tournament Feature in this Invitational

This tournament is also sponsored by OSC, providing OSC points to all participants!

Spawning Tool has been around for years. It has seen its ups and downs, but never have we seen the activity we saw right after the LotV launch. Our plan to prepare for the launch was to get the build orders feature launched and try to market it as much as possible. The expectations was that the site views would go up by a pretty decent amount, because people need build orders!

These days it can be hard to find build orders. Many of the sites that posted quality builds, stopped mid HotS. This left a niche open for us to jump into! Apparently we did something right!

After the LotV launch, we saw a HUGE jump in views.

When we got this info, we were happy that the preparation paid off. We were glad to see that despite all the talk of the decline of StarCraft and no one laddering, there was clearly a huge interest in build orders and replays.

Here are some more stats that we have gathered!

This is a very promising sign to see. The fact that more than half of our views are from people that have already used the site before leads us to think that we are doing our jobs well. People would not come back to a site if they did not see any improvement value in it.

One thing we have been really hyped about is the amount of people on the site throughout the day. As I am writing this post, it is 6am EST. The site has been averaging from 20-40 active viewers every time that I have checked since the launch.

Build wise, there are many people posting, viewing, and getting involved. There can never be enough StarCraft content though! If any of you have a cool build or idea, you’re welcome to add your builds. Or if you just want to learn a new build, just come by to study up (and vote and comment while you’re at it). We are very open to getting new people to help out if they are interested.

Overall, thanks to all the content creators and build posters that have gotten involved already. You guys made this entire plan possible! We want to continue this and are excited for the future of Spawning Tool and StarCraft :).

Most upvoted build order: MorDka

MorDka shared his 2base immortal adept all-in as a new way for Protoss players to remind Zerg players what WoL felt like. You can read up on how it works, follow the build order, run the real-time build order, read the analysis and watch replays about how it works. Here are a few thoughts from the creator:

1. How are you liking the LotV beta so far?

Legacy of the Void is a lot of fun and frustrations since it’s so different than HotS. The game allows for more comebacks with the new units and the stronger defenders advantage. The fast pace of the game makes it more stressfull especially for lower level players and that’s why archon mode is so good, I really enjoy it.

2. How well is the build working on the ladder?

Well… Actually after the newest patch the build doesn’t work so well. Slowing down the warp in time made the warp prism way more vulnerable to corrosive bile and the adept nerf made the build quite a bit weaker but i think that it’s still viable on master level.

3. What builds are your opponents using that are giving you the most trouble?

The game has a bigger defenders advantage right now so there aren’t any specific build orders that i have trouble with. It’s usually a specific new unit that causes the troubles. For example Liberators or Lurkers.

Of course, LotV isn’t coming out for another month, but we actually just saw our LotV beat HotS in our google analytics data, so it seems that the tide is turning, and we want to make sure that the most useful data is available easily. We will, for the foreseeable future, continue to keep our HotS site online, but especially with the replay format changes, those replays just aren’t so useful anymore.

One question we have had a few times is why we split the sites. The primary reason is because the data is very different, and we had to have separate logic for both of them. Specifically, the unit types and game speed actually require different backends in place. Because of that, we felt that the data was altogether incompatible, so keeping them together would just muddle up statistics.

As for why you don’t share you user account between the two? That’s mostly laziness. The 2 sites are on different databases, and I didn’t put forth the effort to sync up the authentication between them.

I saw this build on /r/allthingsterran. /u/Bakemonoda had posted a video on the build where he explains the build. He was more than willing to upload the replay and let me do a write up on it for a build of the week, so thanks to him for that.

Basically this build puts the pressure on the protoss before they can get a warp prism out, then the cyclones can deal with the warp prisms after it’s out :D. The protoss opens standard, but this build still does a good amount of damage/game ending damage.

The goal is to do some damage with the proxy reaper, then follow up with cyclones to finish off the game/put yourself in a game winning position.

The proxy reaper is extremely effective in LotV right now. The reapers arrive before a mothership core is out (on a two base protoss opening) and they can do big damage by kiting around the adepts/stalkers. The bombs also disrupt mining/give extra kills.

By the time that the mothership core can get out (if the protoss decides to make it), there will be a cyclone to target it down. After the third reaper, you can also lift the barracks and float it at a ramp/cliff, for the cyclones, so they can have vision and target stalkers/adepts on top of the ramp. This takes away most of the defenders advantage that the protoss would normally have with terrain.

Reapers also can give vision by jumping up on the cliffs/suiciding up ramps to give vision.

Using the reaper bombs to keep the stalkers/adepts from attacking is also another strong thing that you can do to keep the cyclones from taking damage. The reapers are only there to distract/tank for the cyclones. The fact that both of the units in this cheese have high speed makes it hard for the protoss to deal with. The only thing that they can really do is try to save the MSC to photon overcharge some or use the adept ability really well to counter the speed of the terran units.

The latter is the best of the two in my opinion, because photon overcharge only last like 11 seconds as of the last patch.

The followup for the build is just getting another CC and another factory (if you want to go mech). If you want to go bio, I would reccomend floating the barracks back home, switching it with the factory after about 3 cyclones, and starting stim right away, along with more barracks.

In this game, TY opens with a CC first into a gas before his barracks. This is the most greedy you can be in the early game. He only has one marine out before the 6 minute mark (which he uses to deny scouting). The reasoning behind this is the fact that snutes reaction to the CC first is to go 3 hatch before pool. This is a dream scenario for TY. He quickly adds his second gas to get access to fast tech.

This is a game where TY gains small leads off of early harass. His first mode of harass is the hellions. He makes 4 hellions off of his factory, which ends up roasting 4 drones. This is not a big deal, but it sets snute slightly behind. TY also keeps his hellions alive, to use for more harass throughout the early game.

TY’s second mode of harass is the viking. He uses this to deny overlord scouting, forces snute to spend money on non army related units, and take map control. In the early game, droning up to 3 1/2 base economy is the most important thing for a macro zerg. Setting that back at all can delay the army/tech and make follow up pushes game ending.

TY’s third mode of harass is a widow mine drop. He sends out a medivac with 2 widow mines and 4 marines which kills 8 drones.

All of these small edges that TY gained puts him in a position where Snute’s tech and saturation is delayed. Behind all of this harass, TY is researching stim, making tanks, adding gas, starting double upgrades, and adding more barracks.

The viking is used to push back and kill overlords out on the map, making it so snute does not see the move out with marines, medivacs, and tanks at around 10:30. TY takes a third behind this.

Bridgehead is known as a map where the terrain can be abused. The rocks at the natural have been an issue for many players. TY sieges his tanks behind these rocks while he drops the marines on Snute’s side of them. This creates a strong and very difficult to defend position for snute. It is a very similar strategy to the deadwing one, where you siege behind the rocks in between the natural and the third. This is why zergs always break the rocks there and have also started breaking the rocks on BridgeHead. TY kills Snute’s natural with this push and gains a large supply lead. Snute has almost triple the units lost compared that that of TY after this maneuver.

The aggression doesn’t stop here though! TY keeps dropping in Snute’s natural and 4th, denying the bases and denying mining! Snute does not successfully retake his natural until the 17 minute mark, only to be quickly denied again by TY. Throughout all of this, TY continues to drop marines and widw mines killing drones constantly!

Snute holds on well, but in the end TY’s early game lead, mechanics, and micro prove too much! This is one of my favorite games of all time, I think it’s a must watch!

I chose this build for a replay of the week because of the similarities it shows to Heart of the Swarm. The only main changes are what you can afford and when. Also, in Legacy of the Void, CC First is a much more viable build because of how fast you can get the command center down, compared to the rush distance on maps. The economy change made it so every race can get down buildings and expansions faster, but the time it takes for a unit to go across the map still stays the same, making greedy builds more viable in this new expansion.

Legacy has been pushing towards a more micro and agression based play. With all of the changes, it is harder to get maxed because of how fast your enemy attacks or you attack. Also, in my opinion, upgrades matter even more because turtling is harder to do.

This build starts off with a CC First into a quick 3-rax play. The point of the build is to try to get +1 attack, stim, combat shield, two medivacs, and 16 marines out as fast as possible. When you get these units, you have a ton of utility on the map to do one big attack, multi-prong attack them in their 3rd and main, or just force units out of them. After the starport goes down, I add a quick 4th and 5th barracks to create a strong followup push. This makes the build very all in. It is very hard to transition when you are constantly building out of 5 rax, a factory, and a starport. The amount of units that come for the followup push make up for this though.

One important thing is to stop producing SCVs once you get two base saturation and 3 gases.

Again, this is a very micro oriented build. Misclicks lose games with builds like this. I managed to get lucky and snipe his morphing banelings this game, but if they had formed, I would have split, picked up, and then kept on with the multipronged attacking!

For a long time, Spawning Tool lampshaded its lack of support for Chrono Boost. The timing on Protoss build orders was consistently a few seconds ahead for upgrades and some units, and we just marked it as a “caveat.” With the release of filterable build orders (that included workers) and playable build orders (where times really matter), it became very apparent that we needed to correct that. So we did.

For the curious, we can go into more details about the technical challenges to get to here and the remaining issues with it.

Why we were lazy about fixing it

Chrono Boost has been marked as an issue to address for a few months now but has been a known issue for over 2 years. It has been tricky because the data between casting abilities and building units is hard to line up. Continue reading →

From an outsider’s perspective, a build order is just a build order. It’s an ordered list of units being built. However, there are many ways to both represent and read build orders, and Spawning Tool has added a bevy of options to present build orders differently.

Filter Build Orders by Unit Type

Traditionally, build orders don’t show workers: you just assume that workers are being built constantly unless the supply counts don’t match up. If you want a really precise build order, we put that data back in, so on the side of build orders, you should see this box:

Check or uncheck the different options to see only specific sets of units in the build. Maybe all of the Zerglings are cluttering Scarlett’s build order, and you just want building timings. No problem. Or maybe you just want to quickly scan upgrade timings across builds. Or maybe you want to see every little detail. All of those are possible. Continue reading →